Charlotte Mew, born Charlotte Mary Mew on 15 November 1869 and dead on 24 March 1928, occupies a singular and often haunting position in English poetry. She was admired in her own lifetime by writers as different as Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Walter de la Mare, Siegfried Sassoon, and Ezra Pound, yet her name later slipped from general literary view before being powerfully recovered by feminist, queer, and modernis…
“It seems to me that in the cri de coeur one either has or has not the person, and if the author is not right here he is past mending.”
Neighbourhood:
Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
1 live poem · Old English
Ealhswith of Mercia, conventionally assigned the dates c. 920–c. 970, cannot responsibly be presented as a historical poet. No surviving charter, chronicle, genealogy, monastic record, manuscript inscription, or near-contemporary literary testimony identifies a woman of that name as the author of The Wife’s Lament or of any other Old English poem. The name “Ealhswith of Mercia,” together with the narrative of an exil…
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Medieval Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
